Choke and Swallow
by SilentProtagonist000
Summary: AU. It has been six months since the Origami Killer case was solved. Ethan Mars, the alleged killer, was found dead in his jail cell after his son was rescued. However, the FBI has reopened the case. Madison Paige, Ethan's friend, is thrown back into old anguish, and Norman Jayden finds that old scars can easily be exposed. M for violence and eventual Blake/Jayden sexual content.
1. Prologue

**This is going to be a -only story. This will NOT go up on Deviantart.  
**

**I feel the need to write this. If my Pokemon fans are disappointed, I apologize. I'll still be working on Starting the Fire, I promise.  
**

**-Silent-Protagonist  
**

****()()()

**After.**

The sky was merely overcast today. Scott Shelby found that odd; it had been pouring rain for the past few weeks or so, letting up only long enough for the dank humidity of the aging city streets to dry the stagnant puddles before the churning clouds silently began crying again. Had circumstances not panned out the way they had, Shelby still might be free. He might be _working,_ continually trapped in his lifelong struggle to find a man worthy of his veneration. But no droplets stained his orange jumpsuit today—it was different from other days in this respect. For so long, he had been drowning alongside his victims and refusing to swim for fear of losing against the surging tide.

Now, he was only restrained more.

Shelby sat alone in the long, musty prison bus, his thick neck bowed low and his graying strands of hair dull in the lack of light, his only other company being a few security guards from the jail from which he was being moved. Usually, inmates were transferred from one facility to another together, but Shelby was a special case. Murderers were always a special case. He'd been locked up with a wide range of men for a while—everything from petty thieves to pedophiles, husbands who had beat their wives and fathers who had raped their daughters—and correctional administrators didn't bat an eye. But, interestingly enough, moving him across the city required several professional guards, maximum security, and solitude. Serial killers were worlds away from everyone else—psychologically mismatched and deranged scraps of frustrated therapists who thought them to be lost hopes. The other men that Shelby had quartered with weren't necessarily sick; they were misguided, and the prison system was designed to reconstruct them.

Shelby was very, very different. He knew for a fact that he could never destroy the dark, unsettling thoughts that rustled like a fall breeze through his mind, threatening to rise and strike anyone unfortunate enough to be nearby. Unlike the men that bedded in cells around him and ate their meals in his proximity, he knew that he would never change. Scott Shelby was forever doomed to be a psychopath—and somehow, that hadn't bothered him until now.

_Oh, if only I could make amends._

The bus hit a deep dip in the pavement of the Philadelphia streets, and the jostle caused the tarnished silver handcuffs around Shelby's wrists to dig in further. Biting back a snarl, Shelby gritted his teeth and glared down at his broad belly, swathed by the frayed orange jumpsuit that had probably seen several other inmates before him. Good God, he was large—even the strict exercise regimen in prison had not shed his weight. The recollection of Lauren hounding him to go on a diet when they were together briefly crossed his mind, but the moment that old, crumbling skeleton rattled its bones, Shelby quickly locked it away in the back of his memory, where it belonged. _I can't think about her. Not now. Not ever again._

Still, the attempt to restrain himself had come too late—he was daydreaming about her once more, a set of reminisces that he had promised wouldn't cloud his intentions. Yes, he was a bit big, but she was very thin—too thin, and she'd agreed with him. Because of this, they did their best to eat a great meal at least once a day together, sitting at his rusting card table in his kitchen, where the floor was slightly stained maroon from mold that Lauren's obsessive cleanliness had long eliminated. Neither of them could cook very well, but Lauren continually joked that Scott's scrambled eggs were the best that she'd ever had. He thought of her with her incredibly dark hair, smooth as sand that sifted to the touch, tied back in a ponytail as she ate, glancing up occasionally to grin at him as she wolfed down her food. She's squeak back and forth in the chairs Shelby had picked up from the Philadelphia Police Station when he'd gone into retirement, her miniscule size barely making a sound. They would have a contest about who could make the most noise—a competition Scott always won, but Lauren gained the consolation prize of another batch of eggs.

_I love you, Scott. I hope this never ends._

"We have to grow old and die sometime, Lauren." Scott found himself talking aloud to no one in particular, echoing the chipping canyon of his memories. He felt the eyes of the guards turn and settle on him as his soft but authoritative voice boomed, bouncing off the walls of the bus and prickling their skin. Scott knew they would write off his soliloquy as simple insanity; he knew none of them would listen.

He could speak. But no one would hear him.

_Yeah, yeah, I know, but I've got a ways to go._

"Oh, so I'm the ancient one?"

_You bet. Did I eat all the eggs again? Sorry. I really need to do my share in reducing the grocery bill._

Shelby perceived tears welling up in his sober hazel eyes, slowly permeating him like the rain that he found so much comfort—and so much anguish—in. He gazed out the window with his vision graying with the disheartening sadness of the hanging sky outside, the frost on the metal panes radiating a cold that only made him more bitter. Desperately, he waited for a raindrop. Just one—he didn't need any more than that. He needed the precipitation to fill him, drown the hole in his heart that his brother died in so many years ago. But the harder he prayed, the more the clouds seemed to lighten, precluding to the sun that crept with warm stealth behind their cover. The gods were tired of Scott Shelby's entreaties, exhausted of letting him kill in the midst of the rain. It seemed clear to him that they were through.

"Don't worry about it, sweetie," he whispered, a single tear slipping past his thick shield. "You can eat as much as you want."

As the bus pulled up to Shelby's new home, the sun broke through the clouds.

There was no more time for the rain.


	2. Back

**Before.**

"You from Boston?"

Norman Jayden snapped to attention from his seat in the back of the taxi, the voice that spoke to him intruding as lazily into his meandering thoughts as cigarette smoke. He tried to wave the thick interruption away, but he found that he could not, and that he was forced into the real world once more. He had been staring outside as the car rushed by on the strangely unoccupied Philadelphia streets, disquieted by the rain that refused to fall and grace itself upon those empty roads. Last time he was here, it had been pouring, and for good reason. There was nothing but turmoil and panic that remained as a bitter taste in his memories of Philadelphia, and he doubted that he'd make new ones here. With a sudden blink of his unsettled jade eyes, Jayden removed himself from the churning world outside.

Somehow, he didn't want to think too hard about that.

The taxi driver, Jayden realized, had posed the hazy inquiry to him. The taxi that had picked him up from the airport was a fairly new model; the yellow paint was fresh enough that it had not yet peeled, and the black letters in their flashy block font were far from being chipped, despite the usual weather in cold and quiet Pennsylvania. He racked his brain to remember the company name of this particular cab service, but he couldn't remember. Biting his lip, Jayden glanced down into his lap at his hands, folded modestly and calloused from working on the field. Even at rest, the appendages shook, the palm coming to life on its own. They attempted to face him, glare at his remorseful expression and instill the guilt that haunted him even deeper. He averted his gaze before he stared at them too long; they reminded him further of his insecurities.

Norman Jayden was a man that didn't like to think of his shortcomings.

_There are… complications to using this prototype, you know._

"You from Boston?" Jayden cursed himself for ignoring the now-impatient driver, whose eerily dark eyes were staring intently from their reflection in the rearview mirror as he repeated his question. They were stuck at an intersection in rush-hour traffic behind at least seven other cars—Jayden's plane cleverly landed at four-thirty in the afternoon, and now he had to deal with the exceptionally long taxi ride to his hotel in the flow of Philadelphia natives going home from work. The driver internally noted this, as his thick Pakistani brogue gave way to his coffee-colored skin and broken English. His heritage was quiet and strange, like the lack of rain outside. It wasn't that Jayden never saw someone from the Middle East—he lived in Washington, D.C., after all, and immigrants from every corner of the world were common there. It was just that Jayden could sense a sort of intelligent calculation in the man's guise, and he wasn't sure if that unnerved him or not.

"Yeah," Jayden answered. "Born n' raised. What makes ya say that?"

"You have accent," the man pointed out. "You talk to yourself."

Swallowing, Jayden bit back a disgruntled sigh. When he zoned out, he tended to mumble his bottled innermost thoughts. He'd had a few troublesome encounters with that before. The FBI was not a place in which to spill secrets. "Sahrry," he apologized—although he wasn't sure for what. The response seemed correct to him; correct to every situation. Only when Jayden uttered that single, rushed word did he realize that the driver was right—his Boston brogue lumbered heavily with the cumbersome movement of an ogre. It was distracting for some reason, even though he had lived with it his entire life. Perhaps he'd never truly noticed it until now. He was never teased for speaking the way he did, never alienated. But then again, he hadn't really been included, either.

The taxi driver shook his head before flickering his pensive gaze away from the rearview mirror and back to the traffic before him, which was slowly lurching forward from the advent of a green light. "Do not be sorry," he reassured. "Be proud of home." Dropping his serious expression, Jayden watched as he preoccupied himself with a rusting flatbed delivery truck that was trying to muscle its way in front of him from the right lane, honking his horn and shouting in rapid-fire Arabic, screaming possibly what Jayden assumed to be harsh expletives. When the truck finally cut in, the agent restrained an amused smirk as the man raised one sinewy, brown-skinned hand and flipped the antagonist driver the bird. This city was much more insulting and personal than Washington. That was one thing he didn't mind about Pennsylvania—the people. Normally, he wasn't very partial to people. He much preferred being alone.

_Be proud of home._ That's what he'd said. In fact, Jayden liked to eschew from that very thing. Home. Boston, Massachusetts—that was his literal flesh and blood, and he had the scars and the empty voice to prove it. But a house was not a home. There was no love in Boston. Perhaps it was that very town that had shaped him to be the rushed, silent man that he was today. There was much blood, too much hatred in his retrospect for him to believe that he could have changed anything about himself.

He couldn't be proud of a home that wouldn't accept him.

"You think a lot." Jayden came to realize that he wasn't going to get any daydreaming done in this taxi. Once more, the persistent driver was staring at him from the reflection of the mirror, unblinkingly assessing him like a Great Dane. Jayden could hardly understand him though his murky enunciation. "Police don't think much. You different." With a slight nod, Jayden understood that he was indicating to the gleaming badge around his neck, connected by a beaded chain, somewhat dull and worn from his years in the organization. He'd known for months that he needed a new string for his ID, but hadn't gotten around to buying one. Chalk another one up for being busy, he supposed.

"Ya make a lotta observations," Norman mumbled, his interest now as lackluster as the band around his badge. "I'm waitin' for a phone call. Can ya please be quiet?"

Snorting, the driver rolled his eyes and pulled forward, finally through the clogged intersection as rush hour began its slow dispersing. "Police," he scoffed. "Always working. Ever vacation with wife?"

"Not married." Reaching into his suit pocket, Jayden palmed his cell phone and placed it in his lap, fingering with the buttons absently. He nearly slipped out of mental consciousness again when he saw his right hand, the thick disfigurements criss-crossing back and forth with the intricacy of a highway system. He could feel emotions from days past traveling down those networks, personalities on their own commutes, separately moving to distal parts of his body and turning his stomach in old anguish that he thought he'd banished a long time ago. No, he was forever chased with the scars on this hand, torturing him with their eternal presence. Briefly, he thought back to the ARI, the phantom sensation of the electronic glove on that very hand tickling his skin. He'd solved so many cases with it—and almost closed the largest one of his career, had the Philadelphia Police Department not royally fucked it up. _I miss it._

And yet he didn't. It was as bad as everything else addictive in his life.

"Really?" The man's eyes widened with muted surprise. "Not even girlfriend?"

"No," Jayden said. "No time."

"Oh," the taxi driver replied. "Makes sense, then."

"What do you mean by that?" Jayden grumbled. He checked his phone for any missed calls or text messages. Nothing. Irritated, he glanced at the Rolex on his left wrist. _5:47. Captain Perry should've called two minutes ago. Can't that asshole be punctual?_ With a dissatisfied huff, Jayden put his phone to sleep and ran his fingers through his short brown hair. Perhaps he should take the initiative to phone him instead—Perry was probably waiting for just that. For being the head of the same police department that flipped the Origami Killer case upside down, Perry wasn't very humble. _They let the bastard go free, and he can't even show some damn humiliation._ Shit, Jayden hated unaffiliated cops. They were terribly inefficient, and that was inexcusable in the justice system, in his opinion. That was why he'd joined the FBI—at least the agency knew what the hell they were doing and didn't rely on brute force to take down their suspects.

"A man with a good woman," the driver grinned, cheerfully flashing the wedding ring on the hand closest to Jayden, "is never overworked." He broke into a belly laugh after that, giving the agent his turn to roll his eyes. Jayden broke eye contact with his conversational partner and started to play with his phone again, steering around his contacts list to find Perry, buried deep in the undisturbed numbers that he hadn't called in ages. Once located, Jayden dialed the captain's extension line and pressed the receiver up to his ear, waiting patiently as the line rang once, twice. He noticed the clouds for a second time—heavy with rain that would not fall and would instead be swallowed, doomed to be carried elsewhere.

"Like I said," he responded to the driver. "I don't have time f' that."


	3. The Beginning

**I'm not going to have another Soullessness repeat in which a ton of plot holes appear with no rational explanation until the eighteenth chapter or something, so I'm going to do my best to explain this story a little before things get too gritty. This story is not TOTALLY set in the plot of ****_Heavy Rain_****-there are a few key differences to the way this story is set up:**

**1. Ethan was arrested and committed suicide. **

**2. Jayden rescued Shaun Mars. **

**3. Madison was never in love with Ethan in this story, unlike the course game; she was only intrigued by him here, as she only knew him for roughly a day or two. **

**There we go. If I feel the need to add anything else later, I will. **

**Please don't forget to drop a favorite or a review! It is hugely appreciated! Especially reviews-they contribute to my growth as a writer! Please enjoy :)**

**-Silent-Protagonist**

****()()()

Madison Paige grew up understanding that the best promises were the ones that easily fell flat. They were the most attractive because of the way they sounded on the lips of the one who reassured them, the manner in which the words shaped around their softly-spoken mouths drawing her into their false truths. For years, Madison had a tendency to trust people she shouldn't, simply because she was mesmerized by the way they spoke—language, to her, was a private circus, its acts changing from person to person. Men usually uttered in tongues of tiger taming, ringleaders of their own beasts, their flashy imagery and vivid colors hypnotic. On the other hand, certain women talked as if they were clowns, desperately trying to vie for attention with their antics—while others boomed with the commandeering speed and efficiency of acrobats swinging on ropes, or the careful assessments of a tightrope walker. Madison was interested in the mannerisms of people and the way that they carried themselves—which is why she most likely became a journalist.

But there was still no better promise-breaker than her father. His circus's main performance was a magician, for he often pulled fallacies out of his hat or let tall tales fly around him in the form of pure white doves, shedding their feathers on Madison as she watched in the audience below. He was a damn good liar—so many times he'd told her that he'd pick her up after school and take her out to dinner, only to leave her sitting alone outside in the harsh Philadelphia rain. So many times he'd sworn that he'd come with her to the park to play, but he always abandoned her on the swingset, her small pink shoes dragging in the mud as she enviously eyed other children and their smiling, chortling parents interact around her.

She was raised in the back ring of a new housing development in one of the multiple suburbs that surrounded Philadelphia, her two-story brick childhood home identical to the other fifty on that same four blocks or so. She could hardly remember a day when some form of precipitation wasn't pounding down on their grey tin roof and when she didn't have to stumble home from school in the midst of a late fall snow so violent that the skin of her arms and legs—though superbly bundled—stung from the cold. For the first few years of her life, Madison did not know her father except from the few tidbits that her mother—a cardiologist that was often away from home-explained to her. To that woman, he was a deserter and a bum that she wasted "too many years" of her life loving. She didn't know where she lived, what he was doing, or if he even wanted to see his daughter. For that, Madison despised her. Her mother, she thought, could never understand the delicate bond that she'd mentally forged with the man that didn't care—diaphanous, like silk, and so fragile that Madison was frantic to hold on.

"Your father is a coward," her mother had told her one exceptionally morning when she was twelve, stirring the mixture to a cake that Madison hadn't remembered tasting. "A no-good, scheming, deceiving coward. Never believe what he tells you, baby."

It was only years later that she wished she'd listened. Years after the disappointments started, years after he did not attend her high school or college graduations, or called to even congratulate her on new jobs. He didn't even remember birthdays or holidays. Until she was nineteen, Madison sat by the mailbox up to three days before Christmas, waiting for anything—a present, a package, or even a damn card. But nothing came. Nothing ever came, and one day, she simply gave up crucifying herself for a man that refused to be involved. And because of that, she started to avoid men as well. Tall men, short men, strong men, weak—she completely denied involvement with any of them beyond one-night stands, satisfaction that always left her emptier than when she began. In the very back of her mind, she knew that she was trying to fill the void that her father had left in his wake, but she did not dwell on the catalyst that could never be changed.

And then, in the midst of murder and a week of especially powerful rain, she met Ethan.

Her insomnia was very strong then; she constantly awoke after twenty minutes, drench in a cold sweat that bathed her from head to toe. She found refuge in hotels, sleeping in the empty beds of past anonymous guests. Somehow, it was easier to sleep there, between the sheets that had been God knows where, in an environment that served to curse more than comfort. This time, Madison chose the last motel that she'd yet to stay in—a decades-old overnight place with roaches making homes under the sinks and a neon sign with only two functional letters. Her motorcycle had purred beneath her as she blearily made her way through the pouring streets, running the occasional red light and cutting every corner that she could. She just needed sleep. Just sleep, or else the night terrors would return again.

Once she'd picked up her room key from the mouth-breathing cretin in the lobby office, trying to brush off his lecherous skirting of his eyes across her body, Madison exhaustedly climbed up the outdoor stairs. They curled beneath her low weight with each step, rustically threatening to snap and send her plummeting. Keeping her head bowed, her chin touching her prominent clavicle, Madison reached the top of the second floor balcony, praying that she would not find any close colleagues or anybody else from the paper here. She would never live this down—caught in a sleazy hooker-fucking place, removing herself from her work on the Origami Killer case. What the hell did she have to go off? The Philadelphia Police Department was locking everything in an internal chest so tight that Madison hardly doubted that she could pry it apart far enough to write even a meager story. Something inside her hated the newspaper for making her investigate this—she wasn't sleeping, wasn't eating, and now they wanted her to tread into dangerous territory and hunt a murderer for a damn scoop. She was a journalist, and still she believed that this was a private matter. A quiet issue between father and son, braving a storm for their offspring.

A storm that Madison's own father wouldn't fight.

When she glanced up at that very moment, she saw him, hunched over the railing as he coughed small, pinkish tendrils of blood into the soaking pavement below. His unfathomable stare was thickly brown and weary, as if he were defeated by a force that Madison could not see. Greasy chocolate locks stuck to his forehead from the rain and a stubbly beard framed his square jaw, spotted with spit and crimson red that would not wash away. She froze where she was, watching this struggling man claw at the horizontal bars that looked as if they'd betray and throw him over the edge. Once or twice, he coughed, wrapping an arm gingerly around his middle, wincing in obvious agony. Just as Madison thought she'd seen enough and galvanized herself to continue her march of shame, he flickered his gaze upward.

And he looked at her.

The minute their eyes met, Madison was slammed with a guilt that she could not name—oddly enough, it was not directed toward her hatred of her father or personal contempt, but overwhelming sadness for this total stranger. On the outside, he seemed plain and simple, perhaps living a life of relative luxury, but instantly, Madison saw through the flimsy shield of his façade. There was no end to the torture he suffered in his spirit. She could see it in his eyes, the everlasting journey that he appeared to have walked for a short but terrifying time now. She didn't know his name or the type of person he truly was, but right away, Madison knew that he was not like the other men. He was not her father. She could read him as well as the pages of a book, the large text of his psyche self-consciously glaring her back.

He was different.

_But then again, she was quite the gullible girl._

()()()

"Shaun," he told her the first time, after she'd gotten him cleaned up and his mysterious wounds dressed. "I'm looking for Shaun."

Her recollection hazy from the lack of sleep that she'd been getting these last few days, Madison tiredly racked her brain for any mental cue that would lead her to recognize a name such as that. She was slow, but only a minute passed before she realized that this mysterious entity was searching for Shaun Mars—the most recent victim of the Origami Killer, a shy ten-year-old with wide blue eyes and soft hair who had disappeared two days prior and launched a manhunt of every single police force, local and federal, within a fifty-mile radius of Philadelphia. Every goddamn soul in the state at that time was glued to their televisions and radios, newspapers and computers, sending fruitless pleas to discourteous deities that this ordinary young man would survive the horror and the notoriety of the most elusive serial killer in New England history.

But this man did not even closely resemble a member of the police force, or even a private detective—he was too unkempt, and his semblance was far too removed and jittery to be the usual calm, collected stance of anybody in law enforcement. As a journalist, Madison had met hundreds of them in the past, often meeting with resistance or downright harsh rejection. She'd been called names and forced out of buildings and meetings, to the point where she did not question unless it was the best interest of safety. When she inquired as to why he was searching for Shaun Mars, however, she was surprised to find that he did not decline even the barest, most naked answer.

"I… I can't tell you," he replied, lightly touching his torso, where he'd reported a broken rib or two. He winced openly, gritting his teeth to swallow the pain. "I'm sorry. I need to be left alone."

She didn't leave him alone. She _couldn't._ Perhaps it was the inherent curiosity that came with being a reporter; perhaps it was something more. At first, she could not tell—her emotions toward this unknown, damaged man were as ambiguous as the rain that veiled the city that week. As he wished, she left him alone, but when she came back to check on him, she discovered that he was gone again. In the hours that followed, her inability to sleep became a minimal priority as she waited in her room not six doors down from his, pausing every time she heard a slam or a cough on the concrete terrace outside. Instead of listening to the raindrops that pattered like cat's paws on the roof above her, she paid attention to the sounds of indication. Sounds that would bring this newfound dreamer back to her.

To her astonishment, he did come back—covered in straight burns, blackening his chaste skin with their angry tattoos. Once more, Madison assisted him, disinfecting his abrasions, feeling the moist touch of the alcohol-soaked cotton ball in her waiflike fingers and the rumble of the man's discontent at the stinging pain. He was a determined but modest lion, humbly trying to reject her help in favor of pursuing something that Madison did not understand. "I have to go," he kept pleading, jerking away from her time and again as if he were being healed by a leper. "I have to go now. I'm sorry."

"Please don't leave," Madison begged. Was she really asking for someone to stay? She, a loner for a good portion of her life? Solitude was all she knew and all she thought she wanted to know. "Tell me who you are."

He did tell her. He told her who he was. His name, his motives, his endeavors for Shaun. And when he was finished, he looked at her with his disturbed gaze, his empty irises flickering from side to side, and Madison was sure of only one thing right now.

This man, Ethan Mars, was not her father.

He was not like all the others.

()()()

The best promises were the ones that fell flat the easiest, which is why Madison wasn't sure why she was so deliberately stunned when they arrested Ethan Mars on suspicion of being the Origami Killer a day after their initial meeting. For forty-eight deceptively blissful hours, she was frolicking in a dream that maybe there was one man out there that didn't perceive himself to be a selfish, needy bastard and truly cared for the outcome of his family. She'd admired that about this Ethan—his diligence to his loved ones, no matter the physical or sentimental cost to his own sanity. He'd lined up the origami figures supposedly sent to him by his son's captive on the sand-tinted desk in his room, muttering over and over that he'd dig holes into the center of the earth for Shaun and seek him out until there was no more land in the world to cover. To Madison, for a fleeting moment, Ethan's love for his son was genuine. That was how a father was meant to cherish his child. He opened that door of wholehearted trust to her, the one that had been firmly locked by her own kin.

But, like all the others—like her damned father—he betrayed her trust.

Upon finding his hotel room entrance slightly ajar and abandoned the next morning, she merely figured that he'd vanished once more to hunt for another lead on Shaun and went about her business, keeping him off her mind with the work she'd been neglecting ever since she arrived her. Right after that, she remembered that she'd heated up a cup of coffee in one of the retro ceramic white mugs they provided with the singular machine in the dingy motel lobby, taking care to ensure the warmth of the black liquid as she carried it back up to her room. As she crossed the threshold, a cockroach that had come out in her absence scuttled back into the dark confines of a cave-shaped hole in the stained carpet, the dim light from outdoors frightening it into hiding. Disgusted, Madison bitterly crushed the hole while she reached for the remote to the television, sitting on the cover of her bedspread from her nighttime _CSI_ marathon from the night before, a show she often watched when she couldn't sleep. She switched the monitor on and the colors came to life, blending vibrantly in the moving picture of the local news.

And there was Ethan Mars, was plastered all over the screen, his mug shot wide-eyed and bristled with every palpable emotion—anger, hatred, sadness, and most of all, a tangible sense of guilt. Everything was perfectly readable in his brown gaze, as if he were looking directly at her as he did on the day they first met, studying her curvaceous form and combing through her short ebony hair. Below that face that Madison knew better than she'd expected sat the most forlorn phrase she had ever read in her life: "ORIGAMI KILLER APPREHENDED," in letters so red that she was afraid they would begin to leach blood and spill from the screen.

Madison dropped her mug, but before it even had time to shatter on the scarce carpet, she was already out the door. Behind sat the cup in literal pieces on the ground, the coffee burning its sinister complexion into the ice blue carpet. The cockroach came out again and tentatively touched the small puddle, hesitant as a child unwilling to play in the heavy rain that pounded beyond its walls.

She was at the police station—on the other side of downtown Philadelphia—in twenty minutes sharp, dully noting the enormous rabble gathering on the steps of the precinct to pester all that emerged from the building. The cluster of fifteen scattered news vans with milling staff reporters and cameramen forced Madison to park her motorcycle three blocks away; and even there, the streets were lined with curious and blatantly intrusive folk, trying to catch a glimpse of the team that had apprehended the infamous Origami Killer. But her now-instinctive press mentality was numb. Even though she had been in crowds like this before as a member of their invasive hunting, for the very first time, she found herself horrified at the prying of the media. She was finally close to being in the shoes of someone victimized by her career, and somehow, that made her stomach turn with nauseated odium.

Pushing through the throng of shouting women in stiletto heels ("fuck-me" heels, as Madison had always called them) and cleavage-flaunting shirts, holding microphones and notepads, Madison wished she'd brought an umbrella like everyone else. The sound of the precipitation slapping against the sheet plastic of the large number of the inverse sunshades nearly overwhelmed the cries of the journalists as they clamored to speak over one another. From a distance, the clutter of umbrellas looked like a field of dark daisies, stretching from one grey horizon of the station's front entrance to the other. Inside the swarm, however, there were just strangers, sopping wet as if they were rats, risen from the sewer.

_I have to get inside,_ Madison thought quickly. _I need answers. I need to know what happened to Ethan. _

"None of you need to know a goddamn thing!" A voice, raspy and authoritative, boomed over the host of parasitic reporters with the strength of a loudspeaker, instantly silencing them with its angry urgency. Everyone's eyes shifted to the uppermost steps of the department, absorbing the imposing figure that stood in the form of a man taller than almost every soul present. He was trim but enormously muscular, to the point where he was perhaps twice the size of Madison in all respects. A coarse black beard, peppered with the intermittent strand of gray, sat well-kept on his hardened face, his unspeakably irritated stare making the eager newspapermen cower in fear. Madison felt a chill travel down her spine at his hot rage. She suddenly stopped in her tracks, too afraid of this sudden man to move forward any more.

At the snap of his burly fingers, the multitude visibly jumped. "There's a kid drowning in this frickin' rain, and all you idiots are doing is standing around and bitching for fodder for your stupid papers? I can't believe you. You want something? Fine. We've got a lead on the whereabouts of Shaun Mars, and we're about to dispatch a force to go looking for him." He narrowed his eyes. "Yes, we do have Ethan Mars in custody, and yes, he is completely secure. That's it. No more comments. Now go fuck off. We have work to do, and you're all getting in the way."

"Blake." A scolding rejoinder came from just inside the cocooned station in the form of a quiet, Boston-tinged lilt—delicate and almost effeminate, despite being deep enough to fit a man. With that single syllable materialized another body, this one even thinner and shorter than the obtrusive officer addressing them. He was at least a head junior to the former detective, barely reaching the man's shoulder with the top of his brown head, adorned in hair that appeared silken in the glistening atmosphere. Intelligent jade eyes assessed the assembly first before shifting to the bearded man, turning his head slightly to the right, revealing a long scar on his left cheek. The FBI badge around his neck showed a higher sense of authority, and his presence seemed to soften the rough semblance, smoothing over an edge made jagged. The journalists began to murmur among each other until the hard-eyed man snapped a glare at them again, imposing yet another effective hush.

"… The hell is it, Norman?" The bearded policeman's tone grew considerably less violent, but the hatred in his eyes only increased upon meeting eyes with the FBI agent. Madison only grew more agitated at this hinted exchange. Why, in the justice system, was there no love between men?

"Be gentle, Blake," the agent said. "They're just doin' their jobs too, ya know."

The bearded detective shot the collected man a look of pure disgust. "Screw off, princess," he hissed, purposefully not low enough for the crowd to miss. The confused reporters and Madison stood, watching this altercation with an ounce of interest until the FBI agent turned to them and calmly expressed that the department would not be taking any more interviews. With this, the pair began to make their way down the stairs to the sidewalk, heading to a waiting patrol car, its lights solemnly flashing, so grave that it seemed as if it were about to lead a funeral procession. Grippingly, not one hungry associate of the media tried to hound either of them against their wishes—instead, they parted, disciples of the Red Sea, letting the two through without any struggle. Madison tried to open her mouth to speak to them—supplicate to them, cry out in favor of Ethan's innocence. _He's a father!_ She wanted to scream. _He's not the killer! What kind of monster would slay his own children!? You're wrong! It's not him! _

But by the time she managed the courage to speak, the agent and his bearded partner were already in the squad car, shifting into gear and pulling with a note of urgency away from the pavement, not hitting a single pothole on its path to Main Street. As the public dissipated, grumbling in annoyance from their dismissal, Madison stood alone, rooted in the very spot in which she'd stopped. The news reporters got back into their vans and cars, slowly trickling out of the parking lot, rainwater into a sluice or a storm drain, until she was the only one left. The rain thundered about her, immersing her clothing until she felt too heavy to walk, both from the water and her notion of total, utter defeat.

She wouldn't be surprised if she never slept again.

()()()

Ethan Mars was not a simple act in her circus of lies, standing alongside her father and everyone else she'd ever known.

He was the ringmaster.

And that destroyed her from the inside out.


	4. Resistance

The FBI always put him in the same hotel. He'd been to Philadelphia enough at this point that he should probably start scoping out a good apartment instead of this half-assed that he was shut in for the duration of his visit to the colonial city, where the water was so hard that Jayden was afraid to wash his suits and the sheets were so starched that they made his balls itch for days. Still, he didn't complain—his comfort wasn't really worth anything to the Bureau, and truthfully, he only cared so much about his lodgings. Jayden was a man married to his job—where he did it made no difference to him, whether it be a roach motel or a five-star establishment.

He arrived at this destination close to six in the evening, the sun's last tangerine rays beginning to creep behind the horizon, peeking through the clutter of storefronts and skyscrapers. As the taxi pulled up to the front driveway of the ten-story, grand-bricked inn, Jayden grappled for the stuffed duffel bag in the seat to his left. He reached for the handle to exit the cab when his astute Pakistani driver once again addressed him. "Good luck," he wished honestly, turning to nod kindly at Jayden. "Good job you do, you know." Jayden wasn't sure if the man recognized him from his work on the Origami Killer case; his face, after all, had been pasted over talk shows and televised news stations for several weeks followed Shaun Mars's rescue. Strangers—once more, people that Jayden hardly cared for—called him the "hero of Philadelphia" and the "savior of a hundred future lives," all because he'd been the one to pull Shaun out of his fluid prison and usher him into the waiting arms of his overjoyed mother. He was tired of being idolized by a populace that he felt he was serving only from his desk. The last thing he needed in his life was celebrity and attention.

All he wanted was to be left alone; apparently, that was too much to ask.

He secured his room key in the cramped lobby of the typical city lodge at the front desk, trying not to make eye contact with the skinny, mousy woman as she clambered to write down his name, speaking shaky instructions with a noticeable stutter. Jayden eventually waved her away and tautly—but as smilingly as he could manage—told her that he could take care of himself. Slinging his bag to a more snug position on his gray suit shoulder, Jayden headed toward the elevators, their stainless steel exterior fairly polished and clean for being used so often. This hotel was not necessarily dirty or inhospitable—it was just boring, archetypal of a room service in the downtown portion of any metropolis.

The moment he pressed the button on the large metal panel to summon the elevator, Jayden's cell phone began to vibrate in his inside suit pocket. He frowned deeply. _Oh, who the hell is it now? _He'd just finished a conversation with Captain Perry so cold that he was positive there was winter in his voice, making it all the clearer that nobody in the Philadelphia Police Department wanted Norman Jayden back there. Unfortunately, they were going to have to suffice; it was because of them that the FBI was reopening the Origami Killer case, after all. All along, Jayden had known that Ethan fucking Mars was not the killer—the evidence against him was too circumstantial, barely strong enough to hold up a house of cards in court. Still, nobody listened, and an innocent man died in vain for a sociopath that continued to live among decent human beings to this very day.

But he knew Perry wouldn't admit it. Not a single member of the force would.

Sighing cynically, Jayden reached into his suit and pulled out his bluetooth earpiece, too jaded to check the identity of the caller. The elevator doors open, allowing Jayden into its belly as he tucked in the earphone, solemnly pressing the switch on the exterior to take the call. "Jayden," he introduced, tapping the _Floor 4_ button with his free hand.

"_Hey, princess. Heard you're back in town._"

The instant the familiar gruff, condescending tone touched his ear, Jayden immediately reached his finger indignantly to his ear to hang up. Before he could even raise his arm above his hip, however, the man on the other end cut him off. "_And don't you even think about hanging up on me, Norm. Don't be an asshole._"

Scowling, Jayden dropped his hand. "Oh, like ya always are, ya mean?

"_Oh, snap, kiddo,_" the man on the other end sniggered, his voice dripping with obvious sarcasm. "_Your insults are killing me. Seriously, though, why is your queer little ass back here? I thought we got rid of you once we stuffed Ethan Mars in a box and tossed it in the fucking Delaware._"

Biting his lip, Jayden tried not to draw blood as he immaculately pictured his conversational partner. He imagined the rugged lieutenant, his tall, stocky figure leaning back with overt comfort in his swivel office chair in the open lobby of the Philadelphia Police Department, possibly stroking his bristly beard with a condescending smirk on his eternally smug face. For the life of him, Carter Blake could not wipe the arrogant expression from his psychopathic slate, despite the number of times that Jayden had tried to punch it off him. Perhaps it was merely because Blake was infinitely stronger than him and always won the fight, or he was born feeling superior to everyone and everything—Jayden was not entirely sure. For being a master in psychological profiling, he could never quite analyze Blake well enough to come to a conclusion about what the fuck was wrong with him.

"Unless ya haven't been enlightened, the case is back open," Jayden snapped. The elevator jerked to a sudden halt with nothing more than a warning ding and the doors gradually opened to his floor, revealing a long corridor. Stepping out, Jayden swerved around a man wearing nothing but a bathrobe, boxers, and curious pink bunny slippers shuffling in to take his place. "Federal ordas."

"_Well, fuck you up the ass,_" Blake snorted. "_Ethan Mars was the killer. We caught him, and he's dead now. So why the hell are you federal bureaucrats pissing all over this again?_"

"Fuck _me_ in the ass? Why?" Jayden completely ignored Blake's second statement in favor of the clearly derogatory phrase.

"_Because you're the faggot here,_" Blake stated with a tenor so even that Jayden wanted to reach through the phone and slap him, a characteristic emotion he had while interacting with the lieutenant.

Rolling his eyes, Jayden pulled out his room key as he approached his hotel room. Sliding the card into the electronic reader, he watched as the green light signaled the unlocking of his temporary home. With his free hand, he turned the doorknob and entered, using this action as an excuse to hold off responding to Blake. _Fuckin' asshole. _"Just because I don't have a girlfriend doesn't make me a fag, Blake," he said, tossing his duffel bag on the queen bed in the direct center of the cramped place, already dreading sleeping between the sky-blue sheets that adorned it. "I happen ta be dedicated ta my job. I don't need any distractions."

Jayden heard Blake click his tongue disdainfully at the other end, followed by a dark chuckle that froze the agent in a loathing chill. "_Maybe you'd be a little less tetchy if you had regular access to some pussy_," Blake taunted. "_I kept trying to take you to strip clubs while you were here, but you're the master of weak excuses._"

_Goddammit. Enough a'this _"How'd ya even know I was here?" Jayden demanded.

"_Perry's not the quietest man,_" Blake said. "_I heard every word of his chat with you from my desk. I'm not exactly far away from his office, you know. Then again, maybe it was the sound of your whiny voice from the receiver that tipped me off instead._"

Jayden could almost hear the pathetic bastard sneering in triumph. Stifling a groan, he unzipped his duffel bag and began to unpack with a bit more force than required to perform the task. This was his relationship with Carter Blake—a constant battleground with flying fists and lethal bullets of invectives that were rarely dodged. The pair were placed together as stopgap partners during the initial investigation, all because Perry presumed that the two were scarcely similar enough to get along. But by the end of the first briefing that Jayden led, Blake was at his throat. Jayden met him with little resistance, glad to finally have someone on which to take out the stress that weighted him down like a lead mass at the base of his heart. Every time he even thought of the man, Jayden wanted to claw his eyes out and watch him bleed—and he knew that Carter Blake wanted no gentler fate for him. Time and again, the members of the police force in Philadelphia tried to placate the two, tell them to go out for a beer and sort some things out. Their bickering was getting tiresome, they'd say. We can't deal with it, they'd say. Why can't you two just be civil to each other for once?

But for the week that they knew each other, neither of them tried to make amends.

Somehow, Jayden didn't think that they want their bottomless antipathy to end.

Pulling out a pair of red plaid boxers, Jayden paused and finally released his bated grumble. "Blake," he said, tossing the underwear in the corner with the intention of sorting it later, "I know ya hate me and I hate ya, but—"

"_You just get on board with this now, princess?_" Blake interrupted. "_A little late, don't you think? Next, you're going to tell me that you got that scar of yours on your cheek from tripping and falling on a sharp rock or some shit like that._"

Jayden felt a scathing blush burn across his face. That asshole knew everything, didn't he? "As I was _sayin'_," the FBI agent stressed, sticking his gray-clad forearm deeper into the recedes of his luggage as he searched for his toiletries that he was certain he packed in the bottom. "I'm gonna be back there whether ya or I like it or not, so yer just gonna have ta' deal with me and not be a fuckin' bully, okay? I don't wanna hafta put up with anymore a' ya bullshit."

Blake snorted contemptuously. "_Yeah, yeah, and you just keep on talkin' smooth with that prissy accent of yours while I stroke my dick. You're ridiculous, Norm._"

"I'm hangin' up now, jackass." Reaching up, Jayden's finger hovered over the button to terminate the call, set on detaching himself from his nemesis—at least until Blake opened his mouth once more.

"_Before you go,_" Blake began. "_You never answered my question from before. We got a little too caught up in discussing your stupidity, which I admit can be an engrossing topic._ _Mind telling me why exactly the Origami Killer case was reopened when we solved it already? Wait, don't say anything. You feds actually believe that somebody else performed the Origami murders? Really? Mars was the best lead we had, and you knew it._"

"I _told_ ya, Blake, the evidence against Ethan Mars bein' the killah was astoundingly—"_ Clink._ Jayden's hand ceased moving as it rummaged around in the base of his duffel bag, covered in a small heap of clothing as his fingers brushed over the cold, slick surface of an item he was sure he'd gotten rid of months earlier. His blood turned to ice in his veins, the thoroughfare in his skin suddenly stopping as the baleful memories flooded him. The shaking hands. The nosebleeds. The everlasting sense of falling into an inevitable river that wished to drown him. Without warning, they were back—the vicious thoughts of the tremors that once quaked him. Back when he was working on the case with Blake the first time around, the situation had gotten so bad that he could barely control them. Once or twice, the meddlesome lieutenant had seen his withdrawals, and Jayden feared that he would spread around that the delicate FBI boy was a hopeless addict. Strangely, he'd said nothing—he'd even overlooked them.

Perhaps he hadn't known.

If he didn't, Jayden wanted to keep it that way.

"… I'll call ya back, Blake," Jayden said.

"_Goddammit, kid, finish explaining your sorry ass fir—_" Jayden did not hear what came after that, for he had already hung up and pulled the bluetooth from his ear and stowed it away in his jacket pocket. Thrusting his arm further into the mass of clothing, he fumbled around to collect the elusive item, as it continually disappeared under the soft fabric of one of his ties. As he gathered it, he found more, chasing them with the same amount of determination as the first. When he finally believed that there were no more hiding for him to root out, Jayden yanked his fist from the duffel bag as if bitten by a venomous snake. He uncurled the tight fingers around the items, slowly revealing their presence to him, actors in a play Jayden wished he'd long forgotten.

Ten vials of triptocaine sat there, the liquid inside them far bluer than his teal-shaded eyes. They were destructive friends, visiting him once more from the bottom of a travel bag that he must have used to stash them years before. Jayden could do nothing more than stare at them, hoping that they would disappear under his vision, melt into oblivion and serve to trouble him no more. Unfortunately, they did not, so he resorted to throwing them into the drawer of his bedside table and slamming it shut. He heard the glass chink together, the inertia brushing them against one another in a melody that was singing to Jayden, begging him to take them. Jayden squeezed his eyes shut and sat down quickly on the bed, his head falling into his hands. His whole body began to throb with need—a want that he declined to fulfill.

"Three months clean, Jayden," he whispered shakily to himself. "Three months. Don't break it now. Don't you dare fucking relapse." His right hand balled, and he brought it down on his knee, the pain jolting him upright. Opening his eyes, Jayden glanced down in disbelief at the scarred limb, the crossing canals of marks on his fingers jeering at him with silent judgment. He quietly concentrated on the bruise he'd just created, visualizing the soreness sparking through him, the pain reaching every end of him. His blood swelled and he began to feel pleasantly lightheaded. Expelling a breath, he flickered his eyes shut once more.

Norman Jayden was an addict; he knew that no addiction could ever be completely purged from his system. The triptocaine was still there—the pressing desire to have it swimming inside of him again was always there. He knew for a fact that it would never go away. When he wanted it, he turned to something else.

The same craving manifested elsewhere.

_All he did was trade one deadly obsession for another. _


	5. A Rainless Reunion

**A/N: Haha oh my God, there is no excuse for this late update. *Shot* But hey, the next chapter is going to be from Jayden's POV, and I love me some Norman, so maybe there will be less of a gap in time...? **

**ANYWAY, I FINALLY GOT TO PLAY HEAVY RAIN. My boyfriend brought his PS3 home from college and played it with me for about three hours, and we only got about 1/5 through the game. I can't remember where we stopped... I think it was right after the scene in the conference room where Jayden is harassing Blake with the shitty PowerPoint. (I changed the slides every five seconds. "... AND WHADYA GOT, BLAKE? ABSOFUCKINLUTELY NOTHING!" *slide change*) The two of us have some great inside jokes with Norman now ("Blake, that's not mud on my pants." and "Okay, Blake, I'm coming. All over your face"), and I can't take this game seriously anymore. **

**Oh well. **

**Anywho, enjoy, and please don't forget to drop me a favorite/review! :3 They are always much appreciated and cherished!**

**-Silent-Protagonist**

()()()

_The sun peeked through the blinds of Scott Shelby's apartment with the drowsy curiosity of a child; the early morning roused him unpleasantly, for he was sure he'd just gone to sleep. Seeping through the dusty plastic, the playful rays tickled his nose and pounced warmly on his base chest, forcing him to roll onto his side and grumble from aggravation. Yawning, he cracked open his eyes, turning his head away in time to not be blinded by the undeterred sunlight. Shelby blinked twice, focusing his eyes—blurry from rest—on the crowded bedroom around him. _

_There wasn't much to be said about his tiny apartment and even tinier room—there wasn't much else present other than his bed, vanity, and oak dresser closet, standing tall and regal close to the foot of the tangled sheets. Still, it was a quaint and lovely place, and Shelby could never imagine moving out of here into something larger and more confusing. This residence was simple, like him, and he cherished it with all his heart. Ten years he'd lived in this complex, as rundown as it was, with addicts napping on the stairwell and the rare graffiti painting the walls in the intricate, fading colors of washed-out spirits. There were ghosts haunting this building, but neither he nor any of the other tenants found them bothersome. The empty hopes and dreams that congregated here were almost welcome._

_But as forlorn as the apartment would seem to an outsider, the latent form that was delicately quiescent beside him spread congenial warmth to every corner of the bedroom. Lauren had spent the night and was thoroughly exhausted from their activities, for she'd been asleep for almost ten hours now. Her sleek, pearlescent skin shimmered like diamonds in the light of morning as she lied completely naked with her side of the sheets kicked and bunched around her minute feet. With every breath she took, her small but full breasts rose and fell, peppered with goosebumps from the autumn Philadelphia chill and her nipples hard and brown like perfect pennies. Her long black hair fanned out on all sides of her head, encircling her with the faultlessness of a dark halo. As Scott watched her slumber, he felt a smile wider than any he'd ever had before he fell in love with her grace his face. She was utterly gorgeous in every way imaginable—he nearly felt that he didn't deserve her. _

_With a steady chuckle, manifesting itself in the base of his throat with contentment, Scott leaned over and kissed her gently in the valley between her soft knolls. "Hey, love," he murmured lowly to Lauren, careful not to disquiet her. "It's time to get up."_

_Stirring tenderly, Lauren's pale blue eyes opened as she yawned, focusing herself on her lover. "Oh, good morning, Scott," she sighed, an identical smile lighting up her lovely countenance with subdued joy. She rolled over on her left side and squinted with some disgruntlement at the shimmering curtains. "Wow, I feel like I've just barely been to sleep. Daytime already?"_

_"I know, I'm not fully awake, either," Scott admitted. _

_"Can't we just go back to sleep?" Lauren complained. "I don't wanna get up."_

_"Don't you want to look for the Origami Killer again today?" Scott prompted, trying to rouse her. "You're always so animated to search for clues. Your sudden lethargy surprises me."_

_Turning back to him, Lauren regarded him with adoration, her gaze half-lidded with a wholehearted affection as she touched his golden eyes with hers. Immediately, Scott felt his heart swell—oh, how lucky he was—but at the same time, a deep pit of regret stewed in his stomach. What was he doing to her? Would she ever find out? God, he hoped not. Lauren was the only person he'd ever known—sans his late brother, all fault of his despicable father—that blended her color into him like this, painting him with her desire, as if he were a canvas. Scott had only known her for about a month or so, and yet she had absolutely changed him. He believed that with the rescuing of Shaun Mars and the supposed solving of the case with the capture of Ethan Mars would discourage her from exploring onward to find the man that had murdered her own son; he feared she would walk away from him, defeated, and give up, a soul lacking the closure that it so necessitated. _

_But she did not. Instead, she only began visiting him more. "A father would never do that to his son," Lauren said sagaciously one afternoon when Scott inquired to her presence. "He's not the one that did all this. I know it. My gut says so." Every day, she was getting closer—closer to discovering the truth, each step bringing her nearer to the edge of the crag that Scott only wished he could save her from plunging down. When he awoke after a long, dreamless sleep and studied Lauren's lithe, amorous self, he knew that she was one day earlier to leaving him. _

_Scott feared. At this point, he could do nothing but fear. _

_"Yeah," Lauren sighed, "but can't we just stay in bed for a little while longer?"_

_He leaned forward and planted another kiss upon her, this time slightly more urgent. His mouth traveled, wetly caressing her as if he were about to pare her like a supple piece of fruit. Immediately, Lauren's body responded, arching to meet his suckling lips with a lackadaisical hunger. Her pleasure parted and Scott felt her open up to him, welcoming his advances with a sultry moan. It was the most beautiful sound in the world—dulcet and attractive to Scott's ears, wind chimes dancing in a subtle breeze. Collecting her in his arms, he continued to touch every inch of her, exploring her thin frame without hesitation. A small mewl from Lauren heartened him to go on, slowly bringing his curiosity—and her—to a peak at which they could both feel satisfied. _

_"Yes," he gradually responded. "Let's stay here for a bit."_

_They did. _

_But it ended too soon. _

Please don't leave me.

()()()

The bench beneath her gaunt thighs seemed cold—too cold for being a seat made from wood. Errant splinters poked through the fabric of her jeans, marring the already worn denim with minute holes of their own. The timber grazed her unshaved legs, the hairs scraping against her legs from the abrasion with prickling rage. Madison felt a rash coming on, so she crossed her right leg over her left and wrapped her spindly arms around her thin waist. She'd lost so much weight since Ethan's death; for some reason, every time the very vision of his face intruded into her mind, she shoved away her food and heaved up anything that she had managed to choke down. She knew it was unhealthy, and if it were up to her, she'd see a doctor. Yet she couldn't—Ethan was there, always there, endeavoring to tell her something in his state of nonexistence. _Why?_ She asked herself. She'd only known him for less than two days, and the man with his unwavering diligence toward his son and family had permanently imprinted himself on her.

But whenever she inquired, there was no answer. Occasionally, the rain would beat against the windows of her loft apartment as inadequate sound to her silence, but that was never enough for her. Instead, she preferred to listen to the hollow white noise about her as she stared at the ribs poking through her skin and her hips, jagged as a mountain road that led to nowhere.

When it wasn't raining—like today—Madison rode her motorcycle to the park that was about ten blocks from her flat and sat on the very same bench that she was perched upon now to watch the other souls that frequented this city. She wasn't quite sure why she did, but she realized after a visit or two that she took comfort in the green slide with chipping paint and the set of seesaws that had no place in her own memories. There was also something charming about the patrons of this rundown playground as well—mothers and fathers bringing their sons and daughters to play after school, sitting at picnic tables with one eye affixed to their child's location with the watchfulness of a hawk to its prey. Even though Madison always came and left alone, no one gave her a second glance. She was a young single woman, and many parents simply presumed that one of the children was hers, frolicking on the monkey bars and swings with their school friends while she sat back in earnest.

But Madison had never really wanted children. She was afraid that she wouldn't be good enough to raise another human being. It was too much responsibility, too much time. Time that was definitely not wasted, but it was time that she was scared to relinquish.

Here she was at this park, one unusual evening when no clouds blanketed the sky. The sunset painted the horizon instead with its vibrant oranges and reds, pinking the formerly blue dome with the shades of evening. Along with her jeans, she'd slipped on a simple white shirt before going out, a formerly tight ensemble that no longer clung to her wasting body. She'd become too small, she thought as she wrapped her arms around her waist, shaming herself for forgetting to bring a jacket along with her. Clawing desperately for a warmth that eluded her, Madison rubbed her frail arms rapidly, trying to compress the hairs that stood at attention from the chill that nestled around her snugly. She opened her ears and tuned into the noise of the brood, hoping that maybe their joy would somehow penetrate her shield of relentless solitude. For a while, that was all she chose to do—hear the thundering of the tiny, sneakered feet hitting the yellowing grass, the shouts of young comrades as they pulled each other up on the platform of the slide, the slight sobs emitted from cuts and bruises and the coos of their mothers, nursing them back to health. She craned her neck and stared at this park from an angle, her feet brushing the cracked sidewalk below, and thought back to her own childhood. Her mother had rarely taken her to play, despite her many promises—not that Madison had many friends to begin with, but the gesture was a lovely one in theory. And her father reiterated this habit, but she could never bring herself to be desensitized to his lies.

_I'm not alone, _she told herself. There were at least twenty other people here—none of whom she recognized, and for good reason. She'd lost her job at the newspaper five months ago for her failure to fully cover the Origami Killer case, a decision she doubted that she regretted. Her time beside the dauntless heart of Ethan Mars was enough to convince her that she had no right to pry into the private shadows of others. This newfound logic was not exactly one that fit well with the nosy dogma of the media world; the silent adage that huddled in the midst of the flashing camera lights and photographs of supermodels so altered that the originals were unrecognizable. If one was a journalist, one had to snoop. Madison was once comfortable with snooping—and suddenly, she wasn't.

Those hours with Ethan Mars had changed her.

They had changed everything.

"I'm not alone," she repeated to herself, this time aloud. Her quavering, solid tone, feminine and sounding torn to shreds, was easily lost in the mud of children's laughter that surrounded her on all sides. They suddenly seemed distant, miles away from the wanderlust of Madison's thoughts. She no longer heard the jovial chortles of the mischievous characters that stamped about in the yellowing grass, ignoring the dankly overcast sky as it loomed with an intermittent rumble here and there. Instead, she only perceived that menacing force that sat far above her—a foreboding rain that was out of her sphere of control. The clouds whispered bitterly in an esoteric message that Madison was too afraid to decipher.

_You are alone._

"Hey, lady. I said, I think you are alone."

A tiny voice shook Madison from her spent stupor, meek as a mouse, but still carrying a weight of confidence that she'd never remembered having herself. She had not succeeded in sinking in and blending into the wood of the park bench well enough, for a very small young man had spotted her. He stood before her, his little hands balled into fists and shoved into the pocket of his tan raincoat with wide black buttons. The material of his green cargo pants billowed slightly in the minor breeze that was skirting the shins of Madison's jeans—as did his hair, which was as silken and brown as molten cocoa. His eyes, spacious and tinged with the same shade of his glossy locks, regarded her with the congenial curiosity of a child his age. Though diminutive in his stature, he stood with the regality of a boy prince that had no fear in conversing with strangers.

Reaching up, the boy scratched his curvilinear nose that slanted downward like an eagle's beak, staring at her as if he were waiting for a response. Unsure of how to approach this unexpected visitor, Madison cleared her throat and feigned a smile. "Why, yes," she said. "I am by myself right now. My daughter is at home right now with my husband."

"You're lying," the boy said, sharply blunt, narrowing his eyes as he rapidly saw through her ruse. "You don't have a daughter. And you're not married." He calmly pointed to the brittle, bony hand that rested upon Madison's thigh, almost accusatory in the motion. "You aren't wearing a wedding ring."

This child was perhaps no more than ten years old, and still, his words sliced through Madison with the force of a rusted knife. She flinched, reminded by his innocuous cleverness how forlorn she truly was. "That doesn't mean I'm not married," she said.

"My mom still has hers," retorted the boy, "even though Dad's been gone for a while."

_He has? _Madison opened her mouth to say more, but she thought more wisely and closed the problematic chasm before anything could slip out and betray her. For nary a moment, it dully dawned on her that she wasn't the only person in the world that struggled. This child hadn't spoken for more than a few minutes to her, and already she couldn't find the words to answer his somewhat acerbic inquisitiveness. _What happened to him? Is his mother here? Or is he alone, too?_ The boy's doleful eyes settled upon her again, and Madison leaned back further into the prickly base of the bench, clearing her throat.

"Can I sit down here?" The boy gestured to the empty space beside her. Blinking once to process his request, Madison found herself nodding blandly, her very short hair dusting her forehead, the hand of a concerned parent. Visibly, the boy's face brightened at the acceptance of his invitation. A barely discernible smile was a lighthouse of joy on his sweet expression as he climbed up on the wooden surface and curled up against the railing on his side. He hardly took up any room whatsoever; Madison couldn't remember how it had been to be that small. Expectantly, the young man glanced up at her with his shining gaze, brown as the mud at their feet, but much more vibrant and alive.

"Where's your mother?" Madison asked, unsure of what else to say.

"She's at work," the boy told her, kicking up a chunk of soppy mud with his sneaker. The brown tarnished the bright, pristine white, soiling the brand-new shoes with the earth. "She works at the office right down the street." Reaching up, he pointed just cater-corner of the north fence of the park to a skyscraper, its walls nothing but sheer windows from the first floor to the fifty-second. It was fairly in mint condition—in fact, Madison vaguely remembered having to help report on the construction of that very building a year or two ago. One of the tallest structures in Philadelphia, she recalled, it housed several companies in the looming floors, the slender constitution swaying noticeably from side to side from the meager wind. Her stomach dropped with a mere glance—she couldn't imagine working in such a precarious place.

"My mom has a job with lawyers in there," the boy continued. "She's a parachute."

_Parachute?_ Madison tried to process his words for a moment before she understood the childish innocence behind his interpretation of his mother's position. She felt a smile creep on her face—the first in a very long time. It was as if she were trying on a dress too small for her, as the tired grin only served to corrode her further. "You mean a paralegal," she gently corrected.

The boy frowned and tucked his legs into his chest, only sliding her a passing glance. "Really?" He mumbled. "Oh. Okay." He paused for only a beat before he began to speak again. "Do you have a job? Are you a parachute too?"

Madison duly noted that he'd ignored her chiding adjustment completely. He didn't seem to be a problematic child, but there was no doubt in her mind that he was a stubborn boy to care for. "I… I used to," she said. "I used to be a reporter. For the newspaper."

"Was that fun?" The boy asked.

She thought for a minute, carefully timing her response. _Had_ it been fun? She supposed that it had been, at least in the beginning—there was a beautiful thrill to discovery and understanding, placing her experiences into words and sharing that slight piece of her heart with the world. Madison had forgotten how wonderful working once made her feel. In days past, she was on top of everything, a vigilant gargoyle that knew every rumor and could pin every lead. Once upon a time, she'd been called one of the most prolific journalists in the city. And now, of course, she was nothing—"every star has to fall sometime," her absent mother had said to her as a child during one of the sparse days she was home. At the time, Madison hadn't believed her, for she knew a wise, hectic mind couldn't always speak from knowledge. In her eyes, the constant dearth of a parental figure in her life was equivalent to abandonment. Her mother, to her, was no better than the father she incessantly cursed.

But, as it was, Madison found that she was right all along.

"Yes," she admitted eventually, the void sobbing of the rainless sky filling her gaps in speech. "I guess it was pretty fun."

The boy, hardly troubled by her ruminations, began to kick his feet merrily. "I want to be a policeman when I grow up," he told Madison. "They were really nice to me when they saved me. And they must have been smart to find me, too." His voice fell to a hush. "My dad… my dad wasn't. I don't even think he tried."

He lifted his face to meet hers, and the fog surrounding Madison instantly lightened. She stared into the eyes of this boy, his vaporous orbs bringing her further back than she ever desired to go. Within moments, his identity came crashing down upon her with the shock of a thousand pounds of brick. Six months ago, his mug had been plastered on every television channel, newspaper front page, and milk carton in the state—his despondent gawk pleaded with every passerby that happened to meet his faraway look. The freckles bridging his nose seemed to define themselves more now as Madison recognized the same birthmarks from a tumultuous era that felt to be years in the past, those pawprints stamped on the face of the man that Madison couldn't ignore. The ghost of Ethan Mars's body pressed against her side once more, weighing himself into the ocean of grief from the loss of a child and drowning in the rain that fell too heavily around them. Ethan had those identical eyes, a piece of him remaining in this little boy—a shard of the frenetic searching, the struggling ventures to find his son forever embedded in the callow skin of the young man that sat beside her this evening.

_You're wrong,_ Madsion wanted to tell him. _He did look. He tried so hard. He loved you so much. _But what would he say to that? He was far too youthful and immature to fathom the hours that his father spent hitting dead ends and risking his life for the sake of his own. Madison wished so strongly to speak—to tell him how lucky he was to have a parent that cared. He possessed memories that she did not have the privilege of sharing, and she prayed that he would never take them for granted.

Of course, she did not dare utter any of that. "What's your name?" She asked, trying to set aside her qualms about his earlier quip.

"I'm Shaun," he introduced. "What's yours?"

"… Madison," she said after a pause much deeper than she intended. "I'm Madison."

They sat there beneath the wordless, cloudy sky for a a bit more, time stretching on like taffy in a pulling machine. They did not look at each other, nor did they try to kindle the fire of conversation. Madison was not good with children—and she was especially disarmed by the fact that Shaun Mars was so close to her, forcing her to dust off the cobwebs clotting her reminiscences. Just when she was about to excuse herself and walk back into her vacant world, Shaun glanced at his watch and emitted a small gasp.

"It's five-thirty already!" He exclaimed, jumping off the bench. "I have to get back to my mom's building. She'll be getting off soon, and we're going to walk home together." He turned around to face her, a charming smile breaking the cool atmosphere between them. "Will you be here again tomorrow? Same time?"

_Shaun,_ Ethan Mars murmured with his toneless lilt, hollow and distant. _I'm looking for Shaun._

"Yes," Madison said. "I'll be here."

"Good!" Shaun said. He began to walk away, waving behind him as he went. "I'll see you later, okay?" Madison could only nod as he disappeared into the churning crowd of parents and offspring as they gathered, getting ready to head home as the sun hung over the horizon from behind the cloud cover, fading behind tall edifices and barely glinting off the windows of the skyscraper where Shaun was heading. Even as the people trickled away into cars and buses, Madison did not want to move. Instead, she pondered, allowing the shortest minutes to understand what this meant for her. She now had a scheduled play date with Shaun Mars, and there was doubtfully anything she could do to get out of it. She had been assigned a fate—and she vaguely wondered if Ethan had anything to do with it.

She had found Shaun, and she didn't know what to do.

()()()

**A/N: You may or may not have noticed, but I tweaked the chapter titles. I thought "Jayden-2" and "Madison-2" were kind of toolish sobriquets, so I... I named my chapters, which I never do. First time for everything?**


	6. The Bull and the Matador

**Thank you all so much for the favorites and reviews! You wonderful readers deserve truckloads of space hamster cookies. Again, I apologize for the late updates-I'm really trying to keep this going, through work and school-but I promise that it will continue to come, rain or shine.**

**Again, many kudoses, and please drop some more feedback by me in any way you'd like! Praise or criticism-I accept anything!**

**-Silent-Protagonist**

****()()()

Here he was again, back in a place he detested.

That was the life of an FBI agent—work with local police forces and endure the cynical respect the members of the jurisdiction gave. Federal bureaucrats, as Jayden quickly discovered during his days on the initial Origami Killer case, were not exactly presented with a warm welcome. In essence, he understood the apprehension and mistrust of men that worked alongside him; they felt that he, was ironically, a thief, stealing their jobs with a deftness that was not always afforded in the police academy. In truth, Jayden could never be a field cop—he'd tried the training in his early days as a cadet, but he found the solace of a desk and cut-and-dry psychological profiling to be a much better fit. Jayden was not a small man—he was average in height and weight—but he was not particularly imposing and did not command fear on a pliant leash like Carter Blake did. He couldn't strike fear in criminals unless he had time to practice his ruthless ability with words and profiling to knock a suspect down a few pegs, which was virtually never in the fast-paced world of field investigation.

For his entire employment, Norman Jayden had always been a desk man.

But God forbid, because Carter Blake was not.

The evening had passed quickly in Jayden's hotel room downtown, many blocks to the south of the police station. He'd rested from his crowded, consternating flight from Washington, having a quiet drink and watching mindless television, an activity he rarely indulged in. The lights of the blinking, rapidly flashing screen had reflected in the rippling pool of his vodka, swirling colorlessly in the bottle he'd bought at the airport in Philadelphia after disembarking. Alcohol kept him from relapsing back into the triptocaine, the vials of which were currently sitting in the drawer of his nightstand. For reasons beyond him, Jayden couldn't bring himself to throw them away—he not only feared being found out by the wrong mole, but there was also a sort of tainted sentimental value hanging to them. They were ex-lovers within an arm's reach, their pleas to spiral back into days where the clock's hands turned far too little too strong for him to eliminate. By morning, once he'd dressed, the desire to touch the drug—just _touch_ it, and nothing else—was so powerful that Jayden knew he had to leave.

And so, he was back here again, the Philadelphia Police Department, and certainly with his spirits still in the doldrums.

The open office floor of the building's interior was the same as it had been six months ago, its daunting rows of tables staffed with frazzled, exhausted cops typing furious emails and making aggravated phone calls and half-open file cabinets still as grumpy and uninviting as the day Jayden had first arrived. The shining tile floor was scuffed with the boot marks of field officers moving back and forth, not bothering to pick up their feet, caked with mud and the blood of supposedly hardened crooks. Jayden nearly bumped into a wide-eyed intern on his way through the massive double-doors; blonde, buxom and petite, perhaps only reaching Jayden's chest as she ran headfirst into him, the wobbling stack of papers she was precariously brandishing close to spilling out onto the ground. "Oh," she murmured hastily, her soft blue eyes staring at him apologetically around her pile.

"Nah, yer fine," Jayden excused. Swallowing audibly, the young woman maneuvered a path around him, her tall red heels clacking hurriedly away. Jayden, curious, turned to watch her go, confused by her quiet beauty and fearfulness. _Well, I suppose I'd be frightened too, workin' in the same buildin' with all these assholes._

"Agent Jayden?" A sing-song voice chimed in behind his pivoted shoulders, drifting over his gray-suited body and into his ears. The familiar tone struck a fairly comfortable chord within him, and he found a smile long enough to throw a glance back at the aging, jovial woman that stood there. She was wearing a characteristic scarlet pantsuit with black ballet flats, slightly more practical in her choice of footwear, minimal makeup covering the dimples and forehead wrinkles beginning to etch themselves onto her, a sign of definitely changing times. Jayden felt himself internally collapse in relief—the sole friendly face in this station alleviated him like a tranquilizer. He clung to the sensation as long as he possibly could, knowing that the men he was about to come around with would irritate him once more.

"Charlene," Jayden said, not revealing the dancing sentiment in his voice. "It's good to see ya again. How are ya doin'?"

"I'm doing just fine," Charlene told him. "It's been a while. I heard about the reopening of the Origami Killer case, so I'm proud to say that we were actually expecting you today."

Inadvertently, Jayden smiled a very hollow, thin ghost of a smile. He recalled his first day on the original assignment, sitting outside Captain Perry's office in the scratchy guest chair and playing video games with the ARI as he waited for the man to emerge, having caught him off guard from the fact that Jayden's superiors never bothered to inform anybody of transfers. Indeed, that had been a stressful day for everyone involved—more so for Jayden than he cared to admit. His mind was abuzz with memories of the cold, rainy week that he was rooted to one spot, never moving forward or making progress until it was almost too late. And, as much as he wanted to dismiss the needless blame from his already skewered psyche—an endless ocean that even he could not delve into, despite his years of rigorous training in psychology—he knew it was Blake's fault. It was the lieutenant's blunder to place the culpability on Ethan Mars, an obviously innocent suspect that was doing nothing more than trying to claw his son out from the brambles in which he was caught. That much was evident to Jayden from the beginning, but Blake never got it.

Never.

Not for one moment.

When she noticed that Jayden was a bit caught up in the memory, Charlene continued, gesturing to the same chair to the right of the somber glass door that read "Capt. Perry" on its glossy surface in unembellished black letters. "Captain Perry is finishing a telephone conference with your superiors right now," she said. "If you'll take a seat, he should be out in a few minutes."

Snapping back to reality, Jayden scratched the back of his neck sheepishly, doing his best to conceal an embarrassed blush. "Sahrry," he apologized. "Yeah, I'll go sit down." Dipping his head respectfully to the secretary, Jayden pivoted on his heel and walked with the awkward grace of a drunk man to the guest chair.

He settled himself in quietly, remembering the scratchy surface of the cheap gray fabric against the back of his suit jacket, just as bleak and inhospitable as everything in this department. Crossing his arms over the short breadth of his slight chest, Jayden leaned back in the chair and watched with delayed interest as Charlene made her way back to her nearby desk and resumed her previous task, clacking away at the keyboard of the computer in front of her with the fake fingernails and the urgency of a hardened office rat. This time, Jayden did not have the ARI to entertain him—he'd had to quit that particular compulsion as part of his rehabilitation from the triptocaine, his protection of its usefulness in crime scene investigations going overlooked. His psychiatrist had reinforced the fact that Jayden was an addict with a habit, and that the alternate reality interface only magnified his need to escape the real world. He, said the therapist, would have to face the veracity of his situation with the understanding of an adult man and not a temperamental child who relied more on his imagination than responsibility.

_I'm no kid,_ Jayden had said to him that day. _I just don't know where to go from here. _

Suddenly, like the night before on his way up to his hotel room, a voice manifested itself by his ear, intrusive and bothersome. "Well, well," uttered the mirthful, sadistic snicker. "If it isn't Princess Norman. Didn't think you'd be back here so soon."

The hot and rancid coffee-laced breath made Norman frown deeply and turn to meet the face of Lieutenant Carter Blake, a mere inches away and gladly encroaching on the personal space that wasn't really Jayden's to begin with. Their nearby proximity allowed Jayden to assess the slowly forming wrinkles on the middle-aged cop's skin, his jowls starting to hang like the meanest bulldog in town—and the fierce, grim orbs of eyes in his head glowed with the embers of such an animal. Shielding the sagging hide from view was the lieutenant's characteristically well-trimmed and proud beard, black as the hair on Blake's scalp and equally sprinkled with flecks of discolored silver. At the realization that Jayden had noticed him, Blake's nostrils flared slightly, the thick, stocky muscle beneath his blue dress shirt flexing. The FBI agent couldn't help but feel that every time the pair was together, he was the matador and Blake was the angry bull that saw everything in nothing but varying shades of red. He was certainly built like it in both personality and stature.

In a reflex that was rote by now, Jayden gave Blake a mocking, close-lipped smile. "Couldn't wait to see ya, Cartah," he drawled, smooth and gradual, baiting the man.

Blake rolled his eyes and snorted, pulling away from Jayden's countenance and standing up straight, one strapping hand on the back of the agent's chair. Even sitting down, Jayden fully understood his hulking form as he loomed far over him, analyzing him with the smear and quiet flame of old enemies reuniting. "I'm sure you couldn't, Norm," Blake said, his heavy Brooklyn accent just as prominent as Jayden's, giving way to his obvious New York heritage. Philadelphia was an evident downsize from that particular metro area, and Jayden had always been curious as to why Blake had moved to this Revolutionary War town when New York City was so much larger and had more to offer—but Jayden never asked, for he felt it wasn't his place to know. "It's been boring here without you and your profiling assholery to keep me challenged and amused."

"I wasn't here fer long, ya know," Jayden said, cocking a substantial brunette eyebrow. "Just a week."

"Yeah, maybe not," Blake agreed. "But it was a fun week, wasn't it?"

Jayden cringed at his use of the adjective. _Prick._ "Well, now the week's continuin'," he replied. "'Cause ya and yer 'fantastic police work' picked up the wrong guy. So the Bureau sent me back here to correct yer massive fuck-up and make sure you don't do enethin else stupid." Upon uttering "fantastic police work," Jayden raised both hands and pantomimed sardonic quotation marks, narrowing his eyes at Blake in the process, causing the lieutenant to hiss lowly and arch his back slightly, a provoked copperhead snake. Blake was well aware of Jayden's apprehension toward him regarding the unfair jailing and suicide of Ethan Mars—the death of a perfectly decent parent and husband that had, in his eyes, been completely in vain. Yet in spite of the mounting evidence in favor of Ethan's post-mortem innocence, Blake would not buckle—and Jayden knew already that he would be stuck with this obdurate asshole as a partner again for however long it took to pinpoint the real Origami Killer.

Yawning with feigned boredom, Blake popped his knuckles in a gesture that was blatantly nonchalant. "Whatever, I'm human," he defended, not really trying to protect his position. "People screw up. I happened to have picked the wrong guy, according to your brownnosing superiors and their hoity-toity bearings. My gut said Ethan Mars, and so did some evidence, so what the fuck else was I supposed to think, Norm?"

"That maybe," Jayden challenged, "ya think before ya jump the gun into the race."

With the baring of his off-white teeth, slightly sallow from years of smoking, Blake leaned in so closely to Jayden that the tip of his enormous nose grazed the agent's, his expression as murderous as the criminals he dealt with on the streets. Jayden felt his blood pressure spike, his heart rate pounding in his ears and the temples of his head, sensing the radiating waves of rage from his aggressor, feeling—even for a moment—that he'd gained an upper hand of dominance. "You listen here, Mr. Psychology," Blake rumbled, the fury coalescing with the erstwhile rivalry they once had, collecting at the base of his throat like a battle roar. "We'd been searching for the fuckin' killer two goddamn years before you showed your pretty face around here, and Ethan Mars was our only lead. Did you expect me to let something that valuable go? At the time, he was all we had, and you still pursued until the bitter end when that sorry bastard strangled himself with his own damn bedsheets and rotted away in that tiny cell, like he deserved. You and your idiotic masters think differently? Good, then, show me something that gives us a guy other than Mars, and maybe I'll suck your dick a different way, _Norman._"

Repelled by the rank stench of black coffee on Blake's breath, Jayden pulled back far enough to smirk. "Ya gahtta stahp usin' homosexual innuendos like that, Cartah," he said mockingly, "or else someone's gonna think yer gay."

Blake stood up straight again, looking pompous and satisfied as he puffed out his chest with the victorious attitude of a rooster. "Maybe," Blake agreed. "But I'm no faggot—at least not compared to you, queer."

Although he would have flinched in response to that insult from anybody else, Jayden found it surprisingly easy to resist the lieutenant's accusations. He was teleported back to the taxi and the Pakistani driver from the night before, the man's golden wedding ring glinting off the setting glare of the tired sun beneath the ominous cloud cover that hung above Philadelphia. _A man with good woman is never overworked._ Well, then, that cinched why Jayden was chained to his desk, married to his profiling career without much of a notion to make a difference. He'd never officially come out, but everyone seemed to know anyway—within several days of meeting any potential acquaintance, they were either repelled by the underlying understanding of his sexuality or hardened by the prospect of a gay friend. His parents were well aware before he was even old enough to distinguish a difference between sex and camaraderie, and he was approached by almost nothing but interested men in college. Norman Jayden never told a soul in his thirty-four years that he was a homosexual and hadn't even uttered the words aloud himself, but the identity wafted about him like a delectable scent—an aroma that so overpowered that he'd only engaged in a total of two sexual encounters with women before he swept any hopes of heterosexuality under the rug. The soft, plush curves of a lady did not arouse or excite him in any definition, and the shame of his insecurities defeated him so that he walked with an ambiance of denial surrounding him, a fog that closely resembled the death of the psyche that he could only dream he'd merely heard about. Upon entering the FBI academy, Jayden swore off sex completely, plunging himself into a pool of celibacy and further frustration that was only temporarily cured by the triptocaine, his career, and the ARI.

By the time he'd come to the Philadelphia Police Department to work on the Origami Killer case, he hadn't had a romantic relationship in five years. Nothing—even the occasional hurried masturbation sessions had fallen from his list of priorities back then. He was numb to his natural desires, and somehow, he wasn't bothered by that. Instead, he almost felt smug, liberated as compared to his male compatriots that feared not getting off or inevitably losing their virility to the age that threatened to devour them whole. Jayden did not go as far as believe he was superior, but until this particular assignment, he certainly was enlightened.

Until he met Carter Blake.

Right away, the unctuous sarcasm and insults rained down upon Jayden with the sting of poison-tipped spears. From their first meeting at the Jeremy Bowles crime scene onward, Blake made it a point to call him every name in the book—_queer, nancy, faggot, _and most often, _princess._ Each insinuation the sociopathic, bitter man cast upon him made the scars on Jayden's right hand—his old ARI hand—throb and quiver with the pressing need to beat the taller, more built man senseless, despite his physical limitations beside Blake. One excellently executed punch to the mouth would shut the mouthy man up, or at least momentarily throw him off, Jayden presumed. Yet he couldn't ever bring himself to do just that. He wasn't scared of Blake and his false bravado, a show put on by the arrogant cock to impress the hens in the coop, but perhaps he was wary of the repercussions. He knew Blake would do his best to dig up dirt on him, and though he'd eliminated his dependency on the triptocaine and the ARI, Norman Jayden had a different habit now.

And it was a habit that he knew would destroy the precarious foundation his entire career was built on.

_Chack._ The door to Captain Perry's office opened abruptly, causing the fuming agent and his stocky aggressor jump, too enrapt in their argument to pay attention to much else. The pair turned their heads to the stooping, tired form of the aged police chief. Perry seemed much older than Jayden remembered—six months ago, he appeared much healthier, with a glow on this currently jaundiced face and his bright grey hair much fuller than the thinning sheet it was now. The exhaustion of overwork and minimal rest was patent in the way that he shuffled and stared blankly ahead, barely noticing where he and Blake were to his immediate right. "Lieutenant Blake, Agent Jayden," the Captain said thinly, his voice a gossamer web of misery. "Getting along as usual, I see."

Blake cast a shifty, askance glance toward Jayden before straightening his position and nodding at his elder. "Captain Perry," he greeted. "I was just filling Agent Jayden in on what he'd missed in the six month's he's been gone."

"If filling in requires screaming at the top of your lungs, then I suppose you're doing a wonderful job, Lieutenant." Perry paused to cough, a grating, strident noise that sounded clogged and ill. Quickly, Charlene snapped her head up from her computer and leaned beneath her desk, emerging from the sea of paperwork with a plastic bottle of water. Standing up, she hurried to the captain and handed him the drink, watching with notable concern as he unscrewed the lid sloppily in the midst of his fit and took a few rapid swigs. Once his uncontrolled breathing was in line once more, Perry smiled with all the strength he could muster. "Bless you, Charlene. I'm a bit worse than usual today."

Jayden studied the violently sick captain with deep confusion. A bit more than _usual_? What was usual for him these days? He suspected an underlying condition—perhaps an open secret in the department. He didn't know, as he'd been absent for too long to pick up on office gossip quite yet. He stole a glimpse back at Blake, who was uneasily rocking back and forth on his heels with the guise of a reprimanded child. Perhaps he could ask the lieutenant if he knew anything—or would that be prying? Jayden was not much of a social butterfly, and often what was deemed polite and rude was easily mixed up to him.

Captain Perry turned his attention to Jayden, regarding him from the wisps of his chocolate brown hair to the tips of the brown loafers on his feet, gleaming from the spit-shining they'd received that morning. "Ah, Jayden, Jayden," he murmured, almost more of a manta to himself than a statement directed at the FBI agent. "Welcome back. It's been… interesting lately. Quieter than the week of Origami Killer case, that's for damn sure. I'm due for supervising a performance review meeting here soon, so I might as well show you around again. A few things have changed since the last time you were here."

"Captain Perry, if ya don't feel well, I can have Lieutenant Blake fill in," Jayden suggested. He heard—_heard, _as if he were an antagonized tiger in a cage—Blake make a distinct noise of disgust behind him.

Perry seemed troubled by that response. "Are you sure? I've weathered worse. Surely a walk around the station won't kill me."

There was a resounding sigh from Blake and a surge of triumph erupted in Jayden, pervading his veins like a jolt of electricity. "I'll take care of Jayden for you," the lieutenant promised with no dearth of reluctance. "His office hasn't been used for anything else since he left, so we can finish up there. You can rest before your meeting, Captain."

Rolling his eyes, Perry muttered a diatribe under his breath. "Fine, fine," he relented, shooing the two away from the entrance Charlene's enclave and into the milling crowd of plainclothes and suited police officers as they came and went from the building. "You two catch up on a few things—and maybe work your aggression out somehow. I'm tired of your clashes. It exhausts everyone else around here, too; not just ragged old me. The less you argue, the faster we can get things done. This case has to be solved some way or another." He turned to Jayden momentarily. "Jayden, your superiors ordered me to assign you to Blake as a partner once more. I'm not against that, as you two seem to cooperate well. You two are damn good policemen, and you'd better not let me down." Covertly, Perry's disparaging sneer slid to Blake, who appeared that he was choking back a frown by the way his Adam's apple bobbed nervously in his throat. "Again."

Pivoting on his heel, Perry headed back into the musty blackness of his office, the mysterious infirmity even emanating from the atmosphere of the hidden room inside. The door shut tentatively, as if he were worried of waking a sleeping child, and the knob clicked with the indication of locking. Clearly, the captain required some privacy, and Charlene noted this as she schlepped back to her desk, seemingly much more dejected than before. Blake sidled up to Jayden, his towering shadow draping over him as the shorter agent shrank back somewhat into the husky form beside him. Detecting the close movement, Blake shied away, shooting Jayden with a venomous bite of a look. The cupid-shaped mouth beneath his bristly beard curled downward in a distinctive scowl, and suddenly, Jayden felt much smaller and more fragile, the china shop to his bull. His vivid teal eyes watched Blake, searching the minute twitches on his expression that would divulge any directions of what to do next, but there was nothing but a silence that pierced Jayden more than the callousness of his partner.

"What's wrong with 'im?" Jayden inquired, motioning to the Captain's office in an attempt to fill the gap between them.

"Just to let you know," Blake said, ignoring him completely, "we haven't reused your office because we were afraid the next guy would catch queer. It's pretty contagious, you know." Jerking his head to the right, toward the path down the middle of the thicket of open cubicles, Blake took a step forward. "Come on, let's make some good time, princess."

He was already moving forward with Blake by then, but the throbbing of his battered right hand—and the small nick on his cheek—stood even taller than the lieutenant in his mentality, laughing scornfully at Jayden's vain attempts to, once again, fit in. Even as he walked, he understood that he could never relate to anyone else, as he was barely able to keep a handle on himself. Taking a deep breath as Blake pulled ahead of him, Jayden fluttered his eyes shut for nary a minute, letting the feeling of each thump viciously assail his veins and bitterly remind him of the violent new addiction that he needed to care for later. One obsession for another, just as he'd expected.

For a second, he let himself stop breathing.

_Choke on that, princess._


End file.
